Pretoria - A prospective attorney who failed in his attempt to be admitted as such in the high court has also lost his bid to the Supreme Court of Appeal to enter the profession.
There were certain discrepancies in his application before court, and the Supreme Court judges also raised their eyebrows at certain of his utterances to them.
The court agreed with the finding of the high court that Jack Montshiwa should not be allowed to be admitted as a practising attorney.
Montshiwa turned to the Supreme Court to ask for leave to appeal against the order of the high court, which refused to admit him as an attorney.
The judges said that, apart from the discrepancies relating to his vocational training, Montshiwa’s conduct, as demonstrated throughout his application for admission as a legal practitioner and prior thereto, falls far short of the degree of integrity, dignity, honesty and respect expected of an officer of the court.
The Legal Practice Council, the watchdog over the legal profession, referred the Supreme Court to numerous instances of conduct that it said had no place in the application for admission as a legal practitioner.
“It is apparent from these that Mr Montshiwa’s appreciation of the processes, procedures, and decorum of our courts is woefully deficient,” the Supreme Court said.
The court referred to an instance where an attorney practising in Mmabatho filed a notice to oppose his (Montshiwa’s) application for admission.
Montshiwa responded and said the attorney in question’s opposition resulted from “bitterness and stupidity”. He told the Supreme Court judges it was an “idiotic move motivated by stupidity” by the attorney.
Another attorney from Mmabatho also intervened in the proceedings in which Montshiwa applied to be admitted as an attorney.
He referred to conduct by Montshiwa, which he (the attorney) believed was not appropriate.
Montshiwa referred to that complaint as being “idiotic”, “barbaric”, and exhibiting the level of substance expected from “a passionate first-year law student”.
Montshiwa also sent a letter to the Minister of Justice and Correctional Services, requesting him to establish a Commission of Inquiry to investigate “the relationship between that attorney and the North West High Court Bench”.
The Supreme Court said the Judge President of the North West Division of the High Court at the time of him initially applying to be admitted as an attorney was also not spared from Montshiwa’s tirade.
He, at the time, berated the judge president for constituting a full bench of judges from outside her division. He complained that the judge president’s leadership was “a mockery”.
He undertook to ensure that she “would not get away with any unlawful conduct.”
It was revealed in court papers that apart from launching a personal attack on the judge president, he also laid a criminal complaint against her.
Montshiwa also directed insults at the judges who heard his application for admission and accused them of bias and collusion with the judge president against him.
“His vitriolic attacks did not only dominate the proceedings in the high court. In this court, Mr Montshiwa demanded an explanation from the two judges who directed that the Legal Practice Council participate in this application for leave to appeal,” the Supreme Court said.
In turning down his leave to appeal against the high court’s refusal to admit him as an attorney, the Supreme Court said: “All this conduct demonstrates his lack of appreciation of the ethos and principles that govern the legal profession and the courts.”
Montshiwa did not dispute the conduct and utterances attributed to him. He only maintained that his conduct was not inappropriate.
“That cannot be so. His conduct demonstrates a predisposition to bouts of extreme anger and disrespect. Against this background, no other court would find differently from the decision of the high court,” the Supreme Court ruled.
Pretoria News